Questions concerning delays in the federal government’s response or a recent rule requiring DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to personally approve FEMA expenditures over $100,000, including rescue teams, have been met with a stock response from the Department of Homeland Security in the days following the Texas flash flood disaster.
“FEMA is moving from being a large, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens,” is the repeated response. Because the outdated procedures failed Americans in actual emergencies for decades, they are being replaced.
This line has been used by the Trump administration in response to criticism of its plans to restructure or possibly dismantle FEMA for over a month. Additionally, a large number of emergency response experts concur that the agency requires some reform. However, this is the first time that the administration’s pressure to swiftly dismantle the agency is being put to the test against a catastrophic catastrophe. Additionally, it goes against the fundamental emergency management principle of being prepared.
Quick action can help save lives and lessen damage in any disaster. Before an event, protocols should be thoroughly understood and followed. It is not appropriate to change the norms during an ongoing disaster that has claimed over 130 lives and left over 160 more unaccounted for.
Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Urban Institute, told me, “This is exactly what many of us are concerned about.”
“In the context of a really complicated emergency where lots of people’s lives are at stake—that’s just not where you want to see experimentation happening,” he said, adding that no matter how much FEMA might benefit from change, redesigning it on the fly will only cause more destruction.
Additionally, FEMA’s reaction to the flash flood disaster in Texas has not been typical. According to CNN, Noem didn’t give the go-ahead for FEMA to send out urban search and rescue teams—normally dispatched within hours—until more than 72 hours after the flooding started.
The New York Times reported that the agency allowed contracts for call-center employees to expire one day after the disaster, and then failed to respond to thousands of calls from flood survivors. Less than 100 FEMA personnel were on the ground in Texas within four days of the disaster, and 311 by day five. FEMA deployed 1,500 personnel within a week of Hurricane Helene, during what Donald Trump considered a failed response to the flooding.
No thorough evaluation of the federal government’s response will be feasible until later due to the fog-of-war atmosphere that may be created by the situation on the ground in these immediate post-event moments.
Rumbach remarked, “As with any truly catastrophic event, it’s difficult to understand what’s happening at a micro level.”
In addition to Texas’s own strong emergency response system, a number of non-FEMA rescue teams from other states and Mexico came to assist. However, as is customary, each of the other state teams awaited a call from FEMA; CNN reports that FEMA didn’t start activating any of them until last Monday.
Since last Friday, no missing person has been discovered alive. Rumbach stated, “It’s evident that the initial response was significantly more measured and smaller than you would expect from FEMA.”
“The number of personnel and response time are different than what you would have expected a year ago.” Additionally, FEMA is just using fewer resources to operate: The Times claims that since Trump took office in January, about 25% of the agency’s employees have departed. There are currently only deputies serving as FEMA regional administrators in every state along the Gulf Coast due to vacancies.
It might be more accurate to characterize FEMA as “starved and hobbled” at this time rather than “lean” and “deployable.” However, the Trump administration supposedly formed a FEMA review council to provide a plan to restructure the agency.
That council includes Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who called the Trump administration’s response to the flooding “swift and very robust.” Noem reaffirmed her wish to see FEMA “eliminated as it existed” and “remade” during a council meeting on the Wednesday following the floods, which Abbott did not attend. November is when the council’s recommendations are due.
It appears that the administration is aware of the serious problems with its plans to quickly restructure FEMA. Trump stated last month that he only plans to phase out FEMA after this hurricane season, but Noem has kept on board FEMA employees who appeared to be set to be let go.
However, recent reports indicate that, at least for the time being, the administration is further easing its stance on FEMA. According to the Washington Post, the anticipated dissolution might actually resemble a “rebranding.”
In a disaster, reality sets in quickly.
